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The following is the first part of an extensive interview with the well-known Sri Lankan filmmaker Prasanna Vithanage, whose work Pavuru Valalu (Walls Within) was reviewed on the World Socialist Web Siteearlier this year:

A recent scientific investigation has identified a huge cloud of atmospheric pollution covering some 10 million square kilometres of the Indian Ocean—an area approximately the size of the United States. The unusual haze was discovered as part of the Indian Ocean Experiment (INDOEX), which is investigating how pollutants are carried through the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean.

In defiance of severe anti-strike laws, 47,500 nurses affiliated with the Quebec Nurses Federation (FIIQ) are undertaking a general strike, now in its fourth day. The government has threatened to reconvene the National Assembly at the end of the week to pass a special law to force the nurses back to work. It has also called for some of the provisions of anti-union Bill 160 to be implemented. For each day on strike, nurses would be docked two days of wages; the automatic union dues check-off would be suspended for 12 weeks; and every union involved would be fined $125,000, totaling at least $14 million thus far.

Following revelations in a Belfast court last week that a man charged with the 1989 murder of Pat Finucane was an Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) agent, an article has appeared in the Sunday Tribune that claims to give the full story. Finucane, a civil rights lawyer, was shot in his north Belfast home by Ulster Defence Association (UDA) gunmen, acting on information from a British army intelligence agent.

Coal miners sacked at Oakdale, near Sydney, over three weeks ago are still no closer to receiving any redundancy or entitlement money, despite staging a protest in the national capital, Canberra, on June 24. The 150 miners lost their jobs when the mine was closed due to low world coal prices and a $34 million debt. They are owed $6.3 million in accrued long service, holiday pay, sick leave, severance and redundancy payments.

Last week Forbes magazine published its annual list of 200 of the world's wealthiest people, a collection of billionaires whose combined assets topped $1 trillion. As it did last year, the magazine begged pardon for being unable to list every billionaire on the planet, since these now number 465. The full list, it explained, was available on its web site. Forbes noted that the soaring American stock market and a financial rebound in Asia and Latin America produced the latest surge in the holdings of the world's richest, which rose from $879 billion in 1998.

The death sentence handed down Tuesday by a Turkish court against Abdullah Ocalan, the chairman of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), is an attack on the Kurdish people that must be emphatically condemned and opposed by working people and all those who seek to defend democratic rights.

AIDS is now the number one killer disease worldwide, ahead of malaria and tuberculosis. In 1998, four million people in sub-Saharan Africa became infected with HIV, joining approximately 34 million people affected worldwide. Since 1981 approximately 47 million people have contracted HIV, of which 14 million have died.

The Whitney Museum in New York is offering a two-part exhibit this year on American art of the twentieth century. The first installment is presently at the museum through August 22; the second will run from September 26 until January 23 next year.